DIGITIZATION STRATEGIES, COLLECTIONS-USE SURVEYS, AND iDAISY: NEW E-COLLECTIONS-BASED INITIATIVES AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

For the past quarter century any number of initiatives have been organized to help museums make their collections information fit-for-purpose in an intensively networked, digitally formatted, 21^st century world. Although millions of US dollars and the efforts of tens of thousands of dedicated curators have been expended in this effort, little seems to have changed in terms of the way collections are used. Substitution of electronic facsimiles of specimens for actual specimens in routine palaeontological research remains uncommon, databases are populated with information of highly variable quality, and much collections-based information remains undigitized. In part, this situation has arisen as a result of a failure of the natural history museum community to enter into meaningful dialogue with stakeholder communities and understand what their members want/need.

The Natural History Museum (NHM) is experimenting with a different approach to e-information provision. Rather than focusing on specimen records, the NHM has been devoting much effort to the creation of species lists and collections description records. These will provide stakeholders with more and better information about what collections it holds. This effort has been greatly enhanced by the fact that all NHM collections records are held in a single, common database. In addition, all NHM collections have recently been surveyed to determine how relevant they are to climate change research and collections surveys for other research programs are planned. Such surveys are of great value in setting collections development priorities. Finally, the NHM has embarked on a comprehensive human remains data collection project that will, for the first time, provide comprehensive, data - including 3D scans - about its holding in this area. The NHM is also about to embark on an innovative programme to couple its specimen imaging programme with the development of automated image recognition technology (iDAISY) to create online digital identification tools. We are confident that targeted and structured approaches to e-collections development such as these will result in the provision of information that is relevant to professional researchers and citizen scientists alike.